When I saw the neon soccer goals and other detritus assembled on the sidewalk by the Missoula County Courthouse early last week I had a feeling Madame Butterfly was around. As the makeshift camp grew I wondered how our local authorities would deal with this known trouble-maker who HAD housing earlier this year before allegedly throwing AIDS liquid on someone at Blue Heron Place. From the link:
On February 27, 2025, a Missoula Police Department Officer responded to a disorderly conduct call at the Blue Heron Place on Mullan Road. A staff member reported that a resident, later identified as 65-year-old James Muster AKA Madame Butterfly, was threatening the lives of others, screaming, yelling, and refusing to turn down a radio.
A second caller reported that he had been assaulted by Muster, who threw some kind of liquid on him and stated they were going to give the victim “AIDS.” Officers attempted to contact Muster, but Muster immediately fled on foot, requiring a foot chase.
Besides providing a hilarious scene that will now live rent-free in my head, this incident highlights how housing is NOT always the end-all-be-all solution for homelessness. Putting a volatile individual like Madame Butterfly into an apartment unit, for example, just shifted her shit-show to a more contained environment where a whole new set of problems emerged, problems that included a two month stint in jail, at taxpayer expense, and, it would appear, the loss of housing.
By the end of the last week I saw Madame Butterfly speaking with a CITY cop, a COUNTY Sheriff Deputy, and a private Courthouse security guard. What did this impressive trifecta of authority produce? A CITY violation, since at that point much of Butterfly’s belongings were on city sidewalk property. I asked if I could take a picture of the ticket and Madame Butterfly said yes.
This “public nuisance” ticket will require an appearance in court and, if that doesn’t happen, a bench warrant will be issued. I’ve seen this shit play out a hundred times during my seven years working at the shelter. Why hasn’t anything substantive changed?
I asked Madame Butterfly if the Mobile Crisis Unit had been around to help and she said no. It didn’t take me long to determine how I would go about addressing this challenging individual, but that’s not my job anymore, so instead I just suggested she keep ALL her stuff on the Courthouse lawn, since I know from experience that the Sheriff’s Office will be much less likely to do anything about it–kind of like their weird non-action regarding Todd Spence (more on him later this week).
Jurisdictions overseen by Sheriffs appears to be a topic more and more people are including in their critiques of western society falling apart. For example, Zerohedge included the Sheriff when posting a link to a story about the brutal stabbing of a Ukrainian woman on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina:
Once a person becomes a corpse the job of dealing with that corpse falls to wherever that corpse is found. One problem that can occur in our dark and cynical world, though, is that not all corpses are sedentary. Some corpses actually travel, a fact I made fun of before the algorithm gave me this:
To wrap up this hodgepodge of a post here’s a video I really hope is real, since it shows that even Sheriffs sometimes have to deal with the temerity of “equal under the law”.
Stay tuned, I’m hoping to publish something later this week that will provide some perspective on a sad “unattended” death that happened last week, a death that hits way too close to home.
Thanks for reading.
